Considered by many to be
a sequel to director Dario Argento’s horror masterwork SUSPIRIA,
INFERNO ($30) tells the story of Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle), a
young woman who descends into a world of unimaginable horror after discovering
a rare manuscript in antique shop entitled "The Three Mothers."
Written by the architect that built homes for the threesome, the book
reveals the secret of The Three Mothers- who are an incarnation of pure
evil. Rose becomes unsure if "Book Of The Three Mothers"
is a work of fiction, when she recognizes too many similarities between
the apartment building in which she lives and one of the homes described
in the book.

Unfortunately, curiosity
gets the better of Rose and when she begins snooping around in the apartment
building’s basement she finds her worst fears about the house confirmed.
INFERNO also stars Leigh McCloskey as Rose’s brother Mark, who
comes to New York at his sister’s behest, only to find her missing. As
Mark tries to figure out what happened to his sister, he unwittingly gets
closer and closer to the evil dwelling somewhere in the apartment house.
INFERNO is another of Dario Argento’s highly stylized horror offerings.
The movie is both beautiful and repulsive to look at, often at the same
time. There is plenty of blood and gore, but the movie is lit and shot
in such a way that these sequences are imbued with a dreamy/nightmarish
quality that is completely unlike a typical horror outing. The cast of
INFERNO also includes Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, Sascha Pitoëff,
Alida Valli, Veronica Lazar, Gabriele Lavia and Feodor Chaliapin.

Anchor Bay Entertainment
has done a fantastic job with their DVD edition of INFERNO. Presenting
the uncut and uncensored version of the film for the first time in the
US, Anchor Bay is offering Argento fans a definitive release. INFERNO
is properly framed at 1.85:1 and the presentation is enhanced for playback
on 16:9 displays. The transfer was made from the vault negative, and the
image on the DVD is stunning. Everything is wonderfully crisp and is reproduced
with amazing clarity and detail. There is some apparent film grain in
the image, but it is part of the original photography and is never a distraction.
Color reproduction on this DVD is absolutely first rate. A number of scenes
in INFERNO utilize intense red and blue lighting that creates an
otherworldly atmosphere for the film. Because of the lighting, the image
takes on a highly saturated look that would have been impossible for the
older analog video formats to reproduce accurately. Fortunately, DVD doesn’t
have any such inherent limitations, so the hot reds and cold blues within
the image are perfectly recreated without a trace of noise or bleeding.
There are other sequences within the movie that have a far less saturated
look, but they too are reproduced with maximum color fidelity. Blacks
are a solid, inky black, plus there is a respectable level of shadow detail
in the image. Digital compression artifacts never cause any detriment
to the visual quality of the presentation.

For this release, INFERNO
has been given a brand new Dolby Digital 5.1 channel remix by Chase Productions.
The new mix opens up the film’s sound, but there are sonic limitations;
one has to remember that this is an Italian production from 1980. Keith
Emerson’s musical score definitely gets the lion’s share of the benefits
from the work performed by Chase Productions. The music has good fidelity
and is spread across the forward soundstage, as well as being given some
fill by the rear channels. The surrounds also supply ambient sound to
the mix. Dialogue is usually clean and pretty well focused, although it
does have that unmistakable dubbed quality. An English Dolby Surround
soundtrack is also encoded onto the DVD.

The interactive menus offer
a bit of full motion video and music. Through the menus, one can access
the standard scene selection and set up features as well as a few supplements.
The DVD includes a recent interview with director Dario Argento and his
then assistant Lamberto Bava, which runs under ten minutes, but is pretty
informative. Also included on the disc are a theatrical trailer, a still
gallery and talent biographies/filmographies.

Seeing Anchor Bay Entertainment’s
superb looking DVD edition of INFERNO has made this reviewer hope
that Anchor Bay Entertainment will be able to secure the rights to Argento’s
brilliant exercise in horror SUSPIRIA. SUSPIRIA is such
an amazing looking movie that it deserves the same level of care that
Anchor Bay applied to INFERNO. In the mean time, Argento fans can
keep themselves happy by picking up a copy of INFERNO.